How a book proposal is made

My experience honing my book idea, writing a proposal, and finding an agent.

*Update - my book sold to a publisher and will be published in summer of 2025! More about this soon.

Many people who’ve known me primarily as a podcaster aren’t aware that I started my career as a writer - and, in fact, wrote and published four books by my early 30s, the last in 2011. Writing books was a huge part of my identity as a freelance writer, and while none made me rich, they all contributed to my success in numerous ways.

All the books I wrote then were in the parenting genre, with a focus on pregnancy and early parenting - since I was completely immersed in both. It was a very different time in my life, but also a very different time for book publishing. Social media was in its infancy and even Amazon wasn’t the unmatched powerhouse it is today. The way books were pitched, proposed, published, and promoted was simply different then.

So when I finally decided it was time to write another book - more than a decade after my last was published - in many ways, I had to start from scratch and learn how the process works all over again. With one proposal now being circulated by my new agent, and another in the works, I’m excited to be looking forward to my second act career as a published author - and to share what I’ve learned with you.

This post (and the accompanying bonus video) will detail what I’ve learned, how my new proposal came together, the misconceptions I had to let go of, how I found an agent…and what happens now.

Writing The Proposal:

No surprised, honing my idea and shaping my proposal was by far the hardest part of this process. Here’s how I got started: